Project Ares – Pandem (rocket bunney) supercharged LS1 E30

So on to the exterior of the E30 ls1 car we named Ares. Being that the Car will have a supercharged LS1, we wanted this car to be functional. Very functional. No air ride and lots of tire to put down the power with. So we though, we should go widebody! Then we picked the wrong widebody kit……

We picked the Pandem E30 body kit. Why? Because we thought it looked really cool, gave us the ability to run some wide wheel, and there wasnt too many of them around. Little did we know, that this kit is not meant to be functional at all. After getting the kit, we realized, this kit was meant for a car that was going to be parked on air at shows, not put fast lap times down at the track. Every builder who has used this kit on an e30 used it with air suspension for a reason. The wheel arches on this body kit are incredibly high. Meaning cutting the car very very very high. No big deal right? Ever notice how none of the E30s with the pandem kit have their wheels turned when they are slammed? Yea, thats because they cant turn at that ride height. It would touch the body kit. Thats why the wheels are always straight in the pictures.

So we made a mistake. What were we going to do with this very expensive body kit or the custom wheels made for this car? Cut up the body kit? Not with a price tag that it had. However, with some serious chasis modification and creative thinking we came up with a solution.

The first thing we had to do was cut the rear wheel arches. Very high. There was no going back now. It was like performing surgury and making sure there was enough “skin” to sow it back togther. We cut the outer skin and left the inner skin to use it to close up the new fender gap.

The front was a little trickier. After realizing that the car wont be able to turn with 9.5 in wheels because it touched EVERYTHING. At the ride height the Pandem kit was expected to “look” right at, it would rub on the inner fender seem. So we cut it out and welded it shut. On turning it touched the wheel well corners (inside cabin). We had to cut a massive section out to get it to turn lock to lock. On the front the corner of the engine bay had to go for the same reason.

Now being that the car was going to be so low to the ground, we would also need to make the whole front end removable very quickly. This would make it loading onto the trailer to get to track events/shows/etc a little easier. Its not like we could just air up the car at will. The car has a functional coilover system all the way around compliments of ground control. This includes true rear coilover rear setup like the old DTM cars had. We did mention we picked the wrong body kit right? We will explain how we made the front end removable here.